Discussion: Groups Sue To Stop New Orleans From Removing Confederate Statues

TPM Article Topics
#21

Accordingly, on May 15, Butler issued an order to the effect that any woman insulting or showing contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States should be treated as a woman of the town “plying her avocation” - meaning soliciting of prostitution. The order had no sexual connotation; rather, it permitted soldiers to not treat women performing such acts as ladies. If a woman punched a soldier, for example, he could punch her back.

“Seeing how folks hate the idea of PC and are so into free speech, I think a collection should be started up for ‘Ol’ Benji’ right about now. I wonder if I can get a Go Fund Me page started before work. Decisions, decisions.”

2 Likes
#22

So they were tools?

Got it.

1 Like
#23

No one saw that coming…

3 Likes
#24

Fine, then the states in question need to teach the real reason as to why the war started, as opposed to some ‘cotton candied’ excuse why Reconstruction eventually failed. However, I have no problem with Confederate History Month being in play. After all, to tell that thrilling story of how Stonewall Jackson got killed by friendly fire is a rather outstanding moral tale.

3 Likes
#25

We have a Confederate Museum here in New Orleans. That seems like a great location for such statues and other monuments to Confederate heroes and victories. No one is suggesting destroying these “treasures,” just removing them from the public sphere. They are, frankly, offensive to the majority of New Orleaneans. If (white) folks elsewhere in Louisiana would like to have them, I am sure that can be arranged.

5 Likes
#26

I’d be curious to see what kind of arguments the attorneys for these groups put forward in support of the notion that they have standing. “This hurts plaintiffs’ feelings” isn’t going to cut it.

3 Likes
#27

Sheer incompetence: you’re supposed to bulldoze the monuments at 4:00am on the morning that the resolution goes up for a vote.

However, preferable to melting down or grinding up these statues would be some sort of art installation that enabled all members of the public to express their sentiments directly onto fragments these monuments, i.e., the fragments would represent the broken consensus among the city elite that these guys really are revered. For example, ten copies of Lee’s head in a park: some where people may leave flowers or stick post-its about the good ol’ days, some in public toilets for those who would like to express themselves more personally. And those who don’t care much can walk on by.

#28

Where does the first amendment require that statues of a gang of treasonous shits must remain on public lands?

1 Like
#29

So the state has no right to remove statues that its people now find stand for values they find repugnant?

This is a very strange definition of ‘states rights’. States have the right to do anything they like provided that is exactly what you want them to do in which case they have no rights at all.

I think that the best way to celebrate these historical figures would be to load all the statues onto a flatbed and then drop them one by one into an open cesspit at a water treatment works. They can chuck the bust of Cheney in there as a chaser.

3 Likes
#30

This hurts white plaintiff’s feelings.

You forgot the important bit.

1 Like
#31

Wait, don’t you know racists bible thumpers need their symbols of hate? How else can they feel good about themselves?

#32

A group of racist asshole losers that can’t get over the fact that you can’t own people anymore and that they keep trying to fight a war they lost horribly 150 years ago

3 Likes
#33

You have to understand the basic way of thinking involved. To these slavery and Jim Crow nostalgics, it’s a matter of power, and only one race can be in power. The monument to the “battle” in front of the old Customs House put the matter explicitly in the inscription that was altered back in the 70s. It said that the white heroes had died trying to restore White Supremacy to Louisiana. To this way of thinking, we either have White Power in charge, or we have Black Power on top, and they just can’t imagine any middle way, any actual democratic rule in which no ethnic group has the power to lord it over the other.

What they would say to your argument would be that one group or the other, blacks or whites, has to be silent and subservient, and it’s not going to be the white people. Free speech can only be free speech for white people, and white people simply have to oppress blacks, now, in the past, and forever.

2 Likes
#34

“Plaintiffs have a First Amendment right to free expression, free speech and free association,…”
[and the plaintiffs also believe the First amendment provides that everybody needs to listen to them and agree]

“which they exercise by maintaining and preserving the historic character and nature of the City of New Orleans, including their monuments,…”
[Robt E Lee … Virginia fellow we all like]
[P.G.T. Beauregard did not get along with CSA President Jefferson Davis; maybe their statues could be placed next to each other so as to provide them their first amendment right to get along together]
[Battle of Liberty Place obelisk … obelisks have no rights; only slaves have fewer rights. The site needs to have the obelisk removed and replaced with a public rest room]

“and by using the monuments as the location for events commemorating individuals and events critical to the outcome of the Civil War”
[Yes we are proud that there were individuals involved who led this fiasco to a resounding defeat. I say we move these statues to a northern city in a small plot surrounded by a fence as a symbolic metaphor of them serving time as they should have when they were alive]

#35

Ironic that you should invoke The Right Not To Be Offended when it is, after all, the whiners who are invoking that right behind their legal argle-bargle.

And honestly, if we wanted to depict the Confederate “heroes” factually, we should show them running away.

2 Likes
#36

3 Likes
#37

“Remove all historical memory of the civil war.”

Is it possible for someone like you, even just once, to construct a sentence on this or any other topic without hyperbole? No one is attempting to do the thing you say here. It is pure, non-factual hyperbole.

As for the issue of states rights, what rights were they fighting for? The ‘right’ to keep slaves, and the ‘right’ to not be taxed at a higher rate on those slaves, among others.

I put it to people like yourself that there is plenty of room on this issue for hyperbole from all sides, but if you just stick to the historical facts you claim to be such a proponent of, they all lead back to slavery and a deep sense of entitled isolationism that still pervades much of the southern United States today. Neither of these things are worthy of your defense.

There are people in parts of New England who are, to say the least, provincial, but there are plenty of people throughout the southern United States who still, to this day, feel like they live in a separate country from the rest of us. I hope you’re not one of those people. Every Confederate soldier who fought and died in the Civil War was born an American, as were you, as were many of us. It’s our shared country, our shared history, and our shared responsibility for that history. As others have said, these symbols and statues belong in museums and history books, not displayed as monuments to the losing side of a societal struggle to come to grips with truly being a United States of America, a land of freedom for all people.

3 Likes
#38

You’re illogical and irrational blather is repugnant. My guess is you’re not very familiar with the facts and history of the matter, because that’s the typical M.O. of folks using your brand of straw man arguments.

1 Like
#39

Next they’ll head to Germany, Italy, and Japan to erect the statues of Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito for their roles in WWII…free speech and all, ya’ know.

#40

Good one, Ben Carson.

1 Like
Comments are now Members-Only
Join the discussion Free options available